


Advent: Uniform

by FyrMaiden



Series: Klaine Advent 2014 [18]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alcohol, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 07:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2842244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Klaine Advent 2014 Prompt: Uniform</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advent: Uniform

Kurt first sees him sitting behind the piano at Callbacks, singing pop standards for tips, his smile wide and his eyes wider, and his voice like velvet. He’s everything Kurt had never gone for, preppy and bright, a little Ivy League, a little classic Hollywood leading man, but he draws Kurt’s gaze to his corner of the bar regardless, handsome and charismatic, and Kurt thinks, blearily, that if the opportunity arose, he’d be the exact kind of bad decision that he’d like to make, and to keep on making until he wasn’t allowed to anymore…

*

Kurt would usually be reticent to admit it, but he’s actually enjoyed the night in a way he hadn’t expected to when Rachel had pitched it to him two months previously, bustling into his room with with croque monsieur at an unholy hour and talking at him until he started responding.

“We should make a night of it,” she’d said, contextless and apropos of nothing Kurt could pinpoint. “We’ll find a karaoke bar, you can sing Barbra with me, it’ll be fun!”

She’d sounded enthusiastic, and Kurt had frowned at her through the fog of sleep and said nothing. His lucidity was enough, though, as she hadn’t needed a response once that his eyes were at least open, had waved her hands in the air and flicked her hair back over her shoulders and off of her face. They were going out, she’d said, and they were going to get, at the very least, really incredibly tipsy and make some alcohol fuelled bad decisions, and then they’d argue about getting a taxi home before just subwaying it anyway. It was, she’d continued in the void of his silence, a very good plan. Kurt had only stared at her through his flattened, bed mussed bangs, taken a bite of sandwich that he’d realised, on tasting, was actually from the coffee shop she favoured precisely because the owner was an Italian Jew, which she’d said made it the best of all possible worlds and which Kurt still believed meant he was charging her twice the price for old beans. Irrespective, as there were no other plans in his diary for her birthday day, and there wasn’t even a small part of him that would let the one person who’d put up with him for six straight years, including four living with him, celebrate on her own. So he’d said yes, and started planning the perfect outfit to go with their first night of getting drunk legally, and had politely thrown the sandwich away when Rachel bustled back out of the loft again.

They’re at the tail end of that night when they get to Callbacks, well on their way to mildly inebriated. There is no karaoke, only a young man with gelled hair sitting at the piano, working his way through a heavily Top 20 array of pop songs, his voice bouncing, his smile infectious, a jar on the top of the piano filling slowly with notes, to quiet thank yous and smiles that a definitely tipsy Kurt thinks are worth more than ones and fives. Every once in a while, he stops to take a sip of his drink and Kurt picks up his jacket and moves tables again, closer, always closer.

Rachel is at the bar buying drinks for them, because she wants to, because she is now 21 and she can. The last table in front of the piano clears, and Kurt grabs for their glasses and jackets and moves forward one more table. He sees the singer see him, sees the quirk of his eyebrow and the incline of his head, and feels his heart skip. He feels slightly silly. He’s a grown man and this is not his first rodeo. His last boyfriend had been a shaggy-haired English hipster who took photographs of diner food to send to his brother, and the boy before him had been a footballer with a love of country music. Neither of them had made his breath catch in quite the way he feels when the man at the piano takes a beat and then launches into an old Katy Perry song, his voice skipping lightly over ‘Teenage Dream’, meeting his eyes when he hits the corniest lines. Kurt can’t help grinning back.

When his set ends and he’s gathered his tips, Kurt worries that he will leave without him having a chance to speak to him. Rachel is sitting beside him, enthusing about his voice and his style, and Kurt glances at her sidelong. He wants to tell her to let it go, has a suspicion that he can’t confirm that the pianist isn’t on her team, but there’s no way to let her down gently so he allows her to continue, listens half-heartedly as he watches the singer’s perfect ass wend slowly toward the bar, stopping occasionally to laugh with clients, his body language engaged and engaging. Kurt wants to know his name, and has no idea how to ask him what it is. Then Rachel is speaking again, her hand covering his. When he looks at her, her smile is charmed and knowing.

“Go buy him a drink,” she says. “I’ll see you later.”

He wants to tell her not to be silly, but across the tops of the the remaining heads he sees those eyes watching him in return. He doesn’t say anything, and doesn’t really know when she leaves.

The stupidest slightly drunk thing Kurt Hummel does is not learn the name or the number of the beautiful boy with the whisky eyes that he kisses in the doorway of Callbacks before they head in opposite directions down the sidewalk.

*

The luckiest thing to happen to Kurt Hummel occurs almost a month later, most of which he has spent sighing wistfully to anyone who will listen about the boy he met one night, his own Prince Charming, and how he himself had turned into a pumpkin at midnight. A mute pumpkin who had to go home before he did something he’d regret forever, and did something he’d regret forever anyway.

He’s refilling the ketchup bottles at the counter of the diner where he works, listening to Santana complain about their manager and his attitude and the things she’s expected to do for tips and exactly how many customers speak at her in horrible Spanish, and thinking about him again, when she stops mid-flow and whistles softly.

“Cutie at my seven,” she says, and Kurt lifts his head, preparing himself mentally for whatever he’s about the encounter. He turns slowly, and almost drops the bottle in his hand. Santana reaches to catch it as his palms begin to sweat.

Because there he is, his hair styled neatly, parted and gelled in place, his smile just as wide and his body language just as open, chatting idly with patrons at Kurt’s place of work. At his own place of work, judging by the red of his Spotlight uniform. Kurt swallows, and stumbles forward at Santana’s palm between his shoulders.

“His name’s Blaine,” she says. “And I’m pretty sure you know one another already.”


End file.
